Whether politicians or authors, the Spanish revolutionists always smack
to my mind of the property room, and especially is this true of the
authors. Zozaya, Morote and Dicenta have passed for many years now as
terrible men, both destructive and great innovators. But how ridiculous!
Zozaya, like Dicenta, has never done anything but manipulate the
commonplace, failing to impart either lightness or novelty to it, as
have Valera and Anatole France, succeeding only on the other hand in
making it more plumbeous and indigestible.
Speaking of Luis Morote, against whom I urge nothing as a man, he has
always been a bugbear to me, the personification of dullness, of
vulgarity, of everything that lacks interest and charm. I can conceive
nothing lower than an article by Morote.
"What talent that man has! What a revolutionary personality!" they used
to say in Valencia, and once the janitor at the Club added: "To think I
knew that man when he was only this high!" And he held out his hand
about a metre above the ground.
Spain has never produced any revolutionists. Don Nicolás Estévanez, who
imagined himself an anarchist, would fly into a rage if he read an
article which concealed a gallicism in it.
"Do not bother your head about gallicisms," I used to say to him. "What
do they matter, anyway?"
No, we have never had any revolutionists in Spain. That is, we have had
only one: Ferrer.
He was certainly not a man of great mind. When he talked, he was on the
level of Morote and Zozaya, which is nothing more nor less than the
level of everybody else; but when it came to action, he did amount to
something, and that something was dangerous.